Rare Air - 1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am

A one-of-eight first-year Trans Am with a peculiar history emerges from a complete restoration

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines

For decades, General Motors was the biggest corporation in the world, at one point selling one out of every two cars in the U.S. GM made so many cars that some of its divisions were big enough to be counted among the world's largest car companies on their own. Pontiac created the Trans Am during this golden age at GM, its designers and engineers as much at war with Chevrolet as they were with Ford or Dodge, pulling out all the stops to create the definitive Pontiac sports car under the aegis of the charismatic and driven John Z. DeLorean, division general manager.

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Longtime Pontiac ad man--and all-around advocate and fan of the nameplate--Jim Wangers recollects how GM's performance division took on its intra-corporate rivals: "Whatever Chevrolet did, we had to do it better. We had to be better looking. We had to have more performance. We had to have a little more exciting interiors. Everything that Pontiac did--every one of their engineering and marketing developments--was based on besting Chevrolet."
A proverbial force of nature, DeLorean had long admired sports cars from Europe, going so far as to use European-inspired names for the cars developed under him at Pontiac, from GTO to Grand Prix to Le Mans. When GM brass told him the fiberglass-bodied Banshee concept sports car was a dead end but he could have a version of the Camaro instead, he turned his engineers loose with an edict to beat the Camaro at its own game.
Herb Adams, a renowned engineer who worked for more than a decade and a half in Pontiac's Advanced Design group, recalls how he got the assignment. "The guy that DeLorean really trusted," says Adams, "because they worked together so many years, was a guy named Bill Collins. He wasn't my boss, but DeLorean didn't ever seem to care about organization charts. He just called whoever he wanted. Between Bill Collins and DeLorean, they gave me the assignment. I think the total instructions were 'Make it better than a Camaro.'
"My guess is that John wanted something like a 240Z or Jaguar, that kind of a sports car. He wanted us to use the Pontiac overhead-cam six in our development work, which included the PFST. So, we hopped up the six-cylinder a little bit and made it quite a bit faster, but mainly we worked on handling and suspension type things." PFST stood for Pontiac Firebird Sprint Turismo and was the development mule that became the basis for the Trans Am.
"We ended up doing sort of an independent analysis of handling," recalls Adams, "more of a race-car orientation. So, we put race-car tires on it and that made it really bad. So, we worked on high-effort steering--I think that was the first time anybody had done that. And control-arm bushings and stabilizer bars and stabilizer links--anything we could do to make it a more predictable car and still have way better cornering power than anybody else at the time. So, that car, the PFST, was sort of the forerunner of the Trans Am."
Although Adams and his colleagues, most notably Jeff Young, had managed to coax 325 high-strung, high-RPM horsepower out of the 250-cu in OHC six, early designs of the all-new, second-generation 1970 F-body precluded using the tall and long OHC engine, much to DeLorean's chagrin. GM brass were never too keen on manufacturing the expensive-to-produce engine anyway, so the engineers simply turned back to good, old-fashioned V-8 power and torque, ultimately choosing the 400-cu in Ram Air III as the powerplant of choice for the '69 Trans Am.
Once Adams and his group had com¬pleted their development work, Pontiac began preparation for production. "The project was taken out of Advanced Design after a year or so," says Adams, "and I stopped working on it. It moved to what they called Production Engineering Group, where the regular chassis engineers would do their thing to get it ready for production. Typically, the regular chassis engineers, especially the guy that was in charge of Pontiac chassis at the time, really hated us because, 'What were we doing developing a suspension?' That was his job! So, if he could have, he just would have put an end to all of our work, but the fact that DeLorean and Bill Collins were supporting what we learned, I guess they didn't feel they could take that chance. Basically, they took what we had done with PFST and they put it into the 1969 Trans Am. They weren't going to argue with us because they knew that John had already driven the car and loved it. He was the boss. There was no question at that time."
With the engine being an off-the-shelf Pontiac V-8 used in other cars, Adams and his colleagues made their mark on the suspension and handling capabilities of the Trans Am option package. One of the main differences from the run-of-the-mill Firebird or even the Z/28 was due to what Adams calls "a more effective front stabilizer bar." Specifically, they increased the front bar from ¾-inch to one inch (at least doubling the stiffness, according to Adams) and specified urethane end-links in lieu of rubber, making the bar work more at stabilizing the car instead of simply compressing the bushings. "So there was basically almost no lost motion between the bar and the control arm," says Adams, "and that seemed to make the biggest effect not only on handling to keep the body roll down, but the steering response was way better. It just made a different car out of it."
High-effort steering, in the form of the variable-ratio power steering unit, greatly enhanced the handling and road feel of the car, as well. Although the one-inch anti-roll bar was unique to the Trans Am, the variable-ratio power steering was standard on the Firebird 400, the model that formed the basis for production-line T/As. Wangers has nothing but praise for the efforts of Adams: "Herb was really an absolute genius on making that relatively primitive suspension become very capable."
Under the hood, the 1969 Trans Am came standard with the engine known officially as the 400 Ram Air or 400 H.O., though today more commonly known as the Ram Air III. The 335hp V-8 featured the same 10.75:1 compression ratio and four-barrel Quadrajet carburetor as the standard 400, though with a different camshaft, functional ram air and improved, header-like cast exhaust manifolds, the Ram Air III was rated for five more peak horsepower at a slightly higher RPM, a figure generally believed to be quite conservative. Likewise, peak torque remained the same, but also arrived a skosh up the rev range. Although available as an option, the 345hp, round-port Ram Air IV 400 found few takers with Trans Am buyers--only 55 were so equipped, none of them convertibles.
Officially, Pontiac offered a three-speed manual as the standard transmission for Trans Am, but very few three-speeds were ordered with the $1,083 Trans Am package (as with early and later GTOs, 1969 Trans Ams were optioned Firebirds and not yet their own separate model range). The vast majority of hardtops came equipped with the Muncie M-20 wide-ratio four-speed transmission, though the four-speed connected to the Ram Air IV engine was solely the close-ratio M-21. Pontiac also offered an automatic with either engine choice. The eight convertibles were split evenly between four four-speed and four automatic cars.
Like most Pontiacs of the era, the 1969 Firebird options list was quite long, listing many items that can be found on our feature car, including the tilt steering column, Rally II wheels, center console, remote mirrors, Soft-Ray glass, power windows and the rally gauge cluster. In a somewhat unusual circumstance for a non-original-owner car, we were able to speak with the person who ordered this vehicle. Wangers, the Pontiac ad guy, while working for MacManus, John & Adams, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, was actually the one who ordered the car--but not for himself.
"There was this chap by the name of Chuck Adams," says Wangers. "He was, at the time, president of the agency. And his young teenage son kept bugging him about getting a new Firebird. Of course, the best Firebird, at that time coming on the scene, was the Trans Am. Well, one day, he called me--I was an account exec on the Pontiac account--and said, 'I'd like to order out a very special Pontiac.' So, I pulled out an order form I always had since I was kind of the spokesperson for the agency that helped everybody order out their Pontiacs. After a little bit more conversation with him, I ordered out this car, which was a Trans Am convertible. At the time, we had no idea they were only going to build eight of them. It was a very nicely equipped piece. He, of course, got the car, and didn't drive it very much. He kept it pretty much intact for his son, who ultimately matured into driving age. It wasn't a whole lot later--perhaps four or five years--when the agency got sold and the Adams family kind of retired from the business and moved from suburban Detroit to the San Francisco area."
The current owners, two brothers holding a sizable collection of important and significant muscle cars housed in the Pacific Northwest, acquired the car recently after it had spent several decades in San Francisco. The brothers choose to remain anonymous (for now), but wanted to share the car with HMM. We spoke with Ken Mosier, owner of The Finer Details, a high-quality restoration shop in Danville, Indiana, that handled the restoration.
"The car had been dented and dinged over its life and one quarter had been run into," says Ken. "There were no major issues with this restoration. The car is all correct numbers: motor, trans, everything. We completely stripped it down, top to bottom, inside and out, like we do with all of our restorations, and built it from the ground up. It is an absolutely beautiful car." Ken and his crew accurately replicated the Cameo Ivory finish with Tyrol Blue tail panel and stripes, which were painted at the factory and not decals. The guys at The Finer Details have returned the convertible to its former glory, carefully choosing NOS parts when possible and only the best reproduction components when necessary. Authenticity was the main goal. No major body panels required replacing, though a patch panel was used for the damaged rear quarter panel.
While the performance is not as strong as the Ram Air IV-equipped 1969 Trans Am coupes, the rarity of the convertible makes it that much more desirable to collectors. But why didn't the car sell well when new? Herb Adams believes it was production delays required by the unique Trans Am paint and trim (it was the only Firebird sold with a high rear spoiler in 1969), while Wangers believes other factors were involved. "The cars weren't marketed at all," says Wangers, "other than a few ads in the enthusiast publications. It was basically a kind of 'Hey, me too,' kind of a follow up to The Judge. But all of the effort and all of the promotion and all of the advertising dollars that were committed went to the A-body car."
Wangers also believes that customers were counting on getting a second-gen F-body in 1970. "In '69, we did not have a very good year with Firebird," he says. "The word had gotten out early in the year that the '70 was going to be all new. It affected Pontiac a lot more than it affected Chevrolet. They actually had a pretty good year with the Camaro in 1969. Pontiac did not have a good year with the Firebird in '69."
Today, that scared market has left Pontiac fans with their Holy Grail of cars, the ultra-low production 1969 Trans Am convertible.
Club Scene

National Firebird and Trans Am Club
P.O. Box 11238
Chicago, Illinois 60611
773-769-7166
Fax: 773-769-3240www.firebirdtaclub.com
Dues: $35/year • Membership: 2,250
PROS
+ Among most desired muscle cars
+ Original Ram Air driveline
+ Highly detailed restoration
CONS
- Not a Ram Air IV
- Value has reached absurd levels
- Never quite the sports car that DeLorean wanted
Viewpoint
It's an over-the-top car. I've always loved the body on them. I'm not an early Camaro fan, but I've always been a Trans Am fan. Everything I collect and own is either Pontiac or Mopar. I love the body style of that car. I love the way the car rides and handles. They're just all-around great cars.
I love the body. I love the hood. I love the rear deck spoiler. And the stripes--the color combination. In my eyes, it's just a beautiful car. I love the bodylines and the look of the car. I love the way the taillight panel is blued out, along with the stripes. It's art to me. They handle beautifully for that era of car. They're just a very nice all-around car.--Ken Mosier, restorer
1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am
335 HORSEPOWER @ 5,000 RPM
430-lbs.ft. torque @ 3,400 RPM
1/4-mile: 15.4 seconds @ 93 MPH
SPECIFICATIONS